Ask HN: Favourite science history book of the 20th century?
I like the anecdotes and interesting lives of 20th century mathematicians/computer scientist, suggest me please your favourite history book about them. James Burke's book version of 'Connections' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55024.Connections Also Douglas Coupland's 'Microserfs', described as "Here's a guy who seems to have spent a week with engineers and effortlessly absorbed everything that is important about engineering culture, everything that matters about working at a big company, and everything that matters about working at a startup." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2748.Microserfs Turing's cathedral, on the invention and development of the earliest digital computers just before, during, and after WWII. Lots of excellent detail, descriptions of the personalities and relationships of many interesting people, like von Neumann. Richard Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" is an insider's (Manhattan Project, Bell Labs) view of how computer science as we know it developed. John Von Neumann and Norbert Weiner: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death by Steve Heims (1982) Out of print but libraries have it. Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Weiner, the Father
of Cybernetics by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman (2005) Weiner himself wrote some autobiographies, including Child Prodigy and I Am A Mathematician. I believe Weiner's first volume was Ex-Prodigy. I love his story of how his dad liked to pick wild mushrooms for dinner and how he (Norbert) was never sure if he was going to wake up in the morning! Might sound silly but I LOVE: Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections.
They single handedly made me interested in how things were made, how things were on the inside. How things were engineered. The Maniac, by Benjamin Labatut. It’s a fictionalised biography of John von Nuemann and the birth of artificial intelligence. Amazing , surreal and unique How creative to think of writing such a thing! But von Meumann is a big enough intellect and personality to sustain it. The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan - that book was a life changer for me and has been with me ever since. The Faber Book of Science (Carey)
Asimov’s New Guide to Science (Asimov)
The Great Influenza (Barry) Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford and Critical Path by R Buckminster Fuller Summa Technologiae Agreed, but with one caveat: That is the book detailling the history of future science!